they may not nip you."

And her maidens, laughing and shrieking, soon had a larger supply of
crabs than they could eat. They found bits of wood on the beach and
dried sea weed which they set on fire by twirling a pointed stick in a
wooden groove they had brought along with their food. After they had
eaten, they stretched out lazily on the sand and talked until they began
to doze off, one by one.

Pocahontas had strolled a little further down the beach, picking up the
fine thin shells of transparent gold and silver which she liked to make
into necklaces. She had found a number of them and as they were more
than she could hold in her hands, she sat down to string them on a piece
of eel grass until she could transfer them to a thread of sinew. When
she had finished she lay back against a ridge of sand and watched the
gulls as they flew above her, dipping down into the waves every now and
then to bring up a fish. Far away a school of porpoises was circling the
waves, their black fins sinking out of sight and reappearing as
regularly as if they moved to some marine music. Pocahontas wondered
whence they came and whither they and the gulls were bound. How
delightful it was to move so rapidly and so easily through water or air.
But she did not think of envying them. Was she not as fleet as they in
her element? She pressed her hand against the warm sand how she loved
the feel of it; she stretched her naked foot to where the little waves
could wet it. How she loved the lapping of the water! Within her was a
welling up of feeling, a love for all things living.

It was a very quiet world just now; the sun was only a little over the
zenith. Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves
broke the silence. It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades
were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the consciousness of
her enjoyment.

Yet, though she intended to keep awake, when she looked seaward, she
felt sure that she must have fallen asleep and was dreaming the
strangest of dreams. For nowhere save in dreamland had anyone ever
beheld such a sight as seemed to stand out against the horizon. Three
great birds, that some shaman had doubtless created with powerful
medicine, so large that they almost touched the heavens, were skimming
the waves, their white wings blown forward. One, much larger than the
others, moved more swiftly than they.

Yet never, in a dream or in life, were such birds, and little